hollowing souls
by coffee-not-decaf
Summary: From the moment Arthur woke up, he knew he needed to find Merlin.


From the moment Arthur woke up, he knew he needed to find Merlin.

In this strange new world, where he had no clue of its happenings or goings-on, where he was hopelessly confused and out of his league, he needed to find Merlin, because Merlin would know what to do. And naturally Merlin had to be here, he had to be.

Arthur couldn't have come back unless Merlin had, too.

He knew this for certain.

So he adjusted to this new world, this new city and new technology, for he knew it was the only way he had a hope of finding Merlin. He knew Merlin would try to find him, he knew it deep in his bones that Merlin would always find him, but he at least had to attempt finding his friend first.

The Internet was useful for that. Useful for a lot of things, really, even though at first, it was a horrible headache and a hassle. It was an adjustment, but everything in this world was.

Arthur missed Camelot desperately.

He missed _Merlin _desperately.

He discovered three people in the area of London that had the name of Merlin, but none of them were _his _Merlin. One was an old man, a gardener with a kindly smile who didn't insult Arthur once. The next was a younger man, but he was blond and had a voice like sandpaper that grated on Arthur's nerves. The third was a woman.

They weren't Merlin.

He had to be here, he _had _to be. Where Arthur went, Merlin followed. It had been a fact of his life for as long as he had lived it, and it would never change. Not even in death, in this strange and paranormal afterlife. Merlin would be there. He wouldn't have let Arthur come alone.

And yet, Arthur still could not find him. He tried everything he could think of, methods of his time and methods of this new, modern era, but his efforts brought nothing. Merlin, wherever he was, remained out of Arthur's struggling reach.

So Arthur adjusted, adjusted to this new life and new time. He had a job, a flat, and although he was no king, he had managed to create a tiny little pocket of life for himself, and he was proud of that. He hoped Merlin, from whatever nook or cranny of the globe he was hidden in, was looking for him, for it seemed the only option Arthur had left open to him.

But it was in a hospital – a place for ill patrons, a place where physicians were aplenty and Gaius would have fit in splendidly – where Arthur was making a delivery for his job at a delivery company, a meager career for a king of old, but was as good as anything he could muster, that he, by some stroke of chance, luck, or perhaps fate, walked past one of the open doors on the first floor, and from the room's inside, a low moan issued.

Arthur stopped in his tracks.

He recognized that voice, even in the fraction of a second that he heard it. It was the same noise Merlin made when he was injured terribly, when he would try to keep from Arthur just to what extent he was hurt. He knew it. He knew it well.

Without taking a second to regard the consequences of any action he took, Arthur turned and strode into the ward. Taking in the plain white walls, the sight of the figure splayed out over the small bed that was the barren room's only accessory stole the breath from Arthur's lungs.

It was Merlin.

His limbs askew across the bed's surface and dressed in what seemed to be the ordinary get-up for patients at these places, tubes connecting his body to a machine just to his left, and Arthur had read about those, seen pictures of them, they were supposed to help people breathe when they couldn't on their own –

It made sense now, why Arthur had never found Merlin, and why Merlin had never found him.

"No, Merlin, no," Arthur whispered, reaching to grab Merlin's hand, flopped across his stomach as if he was asleep. His fingers were freezing cold, and Arthur held them tighter, so tight that they turned colors beneath his grip. "C'mon, Merlin, wake up. You've got magic, don't you, so you can breathe without these things in your nose. So lazy, Merlin, been lying here the whole time while I'm out scouring the globe for you."

Scouring the globe might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but if it woke Merlin up, just in time to deliver a snarky, perfectly timed response with about eighteen different insults jam-packed into one sentence, then Arthur was certain he would be forgiven.

His words were greeted with a hitched breath and another quiet, pained moan. Arthur felt his throat constrict as he looked down at his oldest friend, who had followed him here just like Arthur knew he would.

"Please, Merlin," Arthur tried again. "Please hear me, at least. I'm here, I found you. It's okay, you're going to be okay. Got it?"

He couldn't expect a response, he knew, but when Merlin's eyes fluttered open, glazed over with only the whites showing, he was hardly surprised. This was Merlin, after all, and Merlin never kept him waiting for long, not on something important like this.

"Can you hear me, Merlin?" Arthur asked, curling his fingers even more tightly around Merlin's own. Would that hurt him? Arthur wasn't sure what state someone like this was in, what were the right and wrong actions he should take, whether he should call for help from a physician – doctor, nurse – or give him herbs or prescriptions or whatever hell they had here in this new world.

"Arthur?"

Merlin's voice was almost hazy, somewhat slurred and barely lucid. Arthur had to smile, though, because this was what he had been looking for, waiting for.

"It's me," Arthur said, but Merlin's face was still searching his own as if he couldn't quite believe it, as if he was doubtful of Arthur's existence.

"No, no, you can't be him," Merlin's voice dropped to a murmur. "I must be…bad shape if I'm seeing Arthur. You're not my Arthur. My Arthur is far away. Far away from where I am."

"What do you mean? Merlin, I'm right here," Arthur argued, heart splintering off at each of Merlin's words. How could Merlin not think he was real, that he wasn't here?"

"I've been alive too long," Merlin said, word turning slurred once more, his eyes dropping off about to head into a doze, and Arthur had to shake him to keep him upright. When his eyes came back into focus, he continued. "Thousand years and I've finally going mad. Took long enough, if you ask me."

"Thousand years? What – what are you talking about?"

"I've been waiting, waiting for my Arthur to come back," Merlin smiled for the first time, smiled lazily up at Arthur as he said the word 'my'. "You look like him, you know. But you…you can't be the same. My Arthur left me long ago. He's somewhere else now, somewhere that's better than here, better than me. I hope he's happy. I hope he remembers me someday, remembers I'm still here waiting."

Arthur blinked back tears that threatened to drop out of his eyes and onto his cheeks. His voice thick, he replied "He – He remembers. He knows, Merlin. He's right here. Just open your eyes. He's right here."

"I wish he was," Merlin's voice was quieter now, taking on a subdued tone. "I wish he was here. I wanted to…I never told him. I never told him I loved him. D'you…d'you think he ever loved me, too?"

Arthur could hardly force a breath out, let alone have enough strength to reply to those words. He knew Merlin, knew every inch of him, even those pieces that Merlin had kept secret until the very end, but it had never once occurred to him just how deep Merlin's loyalty to him ran, he never once considered that maybe Merlin hadn't woken up, that he had simply never gone to sleep in the first place.

"He did," Arthur whispered. "I did, Merlin. I do. I swear. I do."


End file.
